Many consumer products, such as backpacks, book bags, strollers, and child safety seats contain strapping. Commonly, some of the strapping is terminated with a connector that enables sections of the strapping to be selectively connected or separated.
One of the most common strapping connector is a snap-together connector of the type having a male side and a female side. The male side of the connector contains two elongated arms that deform slightly when they enter the female side of the connector. The arms expand into openings within the female side, therein locking the male and female sides of the connector together. One early example of such a prior art connector is found in U.S. Pat. No. 4,800,629 to Ikeda, entitled Plastic Buckle.
Although many variations of such connector types exist in the marketplace, such connectors are used mainly for selectively interconnection strapping or similar flexible tethers.
Also, in the prior art, there exist many toy cars, motorcycles, airplanes and other such toy vehicles that are designed to be launched. Such toy devices typically require a lunching device for accelerating the toy vehicle into motion. In the prior art, launching devices typically use compressed springs or pulled elastic bands to provide the energy needed to accelerate and launch the toy vehicle. As is often the case, the launching device for a toy vehicle is far more complex and expensive than is the toy vehicle itself. Consequently, the launcher for a toy vehicle, if sold with a toy vehicle, is responsible for most of the cost of the packaged toy.
The present invention provides a toy vehicle that can be launched from the female end of a prior art strapping connector. In this manner, the launching device for the toy vehicle is commonplace and can be provided at little cost. Additionally, the configuration of the present invention enables the toy vehicle to be connected to the strapping of a backpack or similar device. In this manner, the toy vehicle can be connected and carried on any secondary object that contains such a strapping connector.
The structure of the present invention and its associated method of use are described and claimed below.